“What is this?”he shouted at Celeste.“What is this!Who did this?”
“Who did what?”she asked, gesturing frantically at Harvey to still the alarm.Harvey was so busy playing with the remote that he didn’t catch that Kadjic had drawn a small fixed-blade knife from his sleeve and was prodding at the plexiglass plate held a half-inch from the painting by the mounting screws.
The alarm went off again, and Kadjic gestured with the blade.“Do you see that?”he demanded, frothing from the mouth.“Do you see that?”
“I seeyougetting bloody close to my painting!”Celeste shouted back, her own spittle flying.“What do you think you’re doing, sir—”
“When?”Kadjic asked, gesturing with the knife again.“When did you last see this painting?Who was alone with it last?”
Celeste and Harvey exchanged glances.“We were,” she said.“Tonight.Right before we opened the doors for canapes.Whatis the problem?”
“Was this there?”he demanded, and using the dagger point, he made scratches in the Plexiglas around where the anomaly was.
There was no alarm sound this time, and Josh took a step back, ready to fade into the startled crowd if he could only get one… more….
“No,” Celeste said softly, glancing closer.“J.D., come here.”
Shit.Well, they’d thought it could happen.“What do you see?”he asked, sounding legitimately puzzled.“I was here this morning, and everything was fine.”
“Yes,” she said, “and it looks almost the same—right down to that one—remember, we couldn’t figure out if it was a brush stroke or a dead fly?”
Tienne had pronounced it a dead fly with a grimace, and the entire mansion had set about trying to capture a fly that exact size and color.A lot of flies had died that week, Molly had said direly, but apparently not in vain.
“Well, it’s still there,” Josh said with a smile.“But what…?”And oh yes.He could pretend to see it now.“Oh.That’s odd.How… how did we not see that before?”
“Was it there before?”Celeste asked, and Josh made a mental note to tell Tienne he’d done a top-rate job.
“The authenticator would have noted it,” Josh said confidently.“I don’t think that particular letter combination—or even any words—were an Abercrombie device.Where did that…?”A gasp of horror here.“Did somebodydefaceyour painting?”he asked.“Why?What do those letters evenmean?”
The grasp of his shoulder was unexpected and brutal.“You tellme!”Kadjic ground out, while Josh’s puke reflex ramped up on cue.“Youdiscovered the painting!”
“And I don’t know how this got on it!”Josh gasped, knowing his face was pale as the pain that had faded with the ibuprofen Hunter had slipped him came roaring back.“Sir, you arehurtingme!”
“That painting,” Kadjic hissed, “is aforgery—a personal message tome.Who sent it, boy—”
“Ouch!”Josh cried out, not dissembling in the least.“It wasn’t there before.The painting I found was an authentic Gertude Abercrombie, and I’m going to puke on your shoes!”
Another vicious twist of the thumb, but before Josh could lose control and follow up on his promise, the pressure disappeared, and Kadjic gave a grunt of pain before dropping the knife on the floor with a clatter.
“You.Will.Not.Touch.Him.”
Josh put a trembling hand to his stomach and stared as Liam Craig, smiling Interpol guy, the nice young man who had kept him company and made him laugh during some of the saddest moments of his illness, now metamorphized into an avenging angel.
His hair was still slicked back, and his eyes were still that merry blue, but his face was flushed with fury, and his jaw clenched so hard his cheekbones stood out in stark relief as he grasped Kadjic’s wrist, putting pressure on his ulnar nerve, which had been why he’d dropped his knife.
Liam gave a little twist with his fingers, and Kadjic cried out.“That painting is a message to me!”he said.“It’s a ghost of the past!”He sounded almost afraid.
“And what’s it saying, mate?”Liam asked, his lower East End coming out in a guttural burst.“Can you share with the crowd?”
“Lightfingers,” Kadjic gasped.“Lightfingers was here.”
Celeste gasped.“Lightfingers is amyth,” she said.
“But I understand this is something he’d do,” Leon said, emerging from the crowd with Julia on his arm.“Even in Italy we’ve heard of Lightfingers.”
“You may let go now,” Kadjic muttered.He cast a baleful glare at Josh, who was in too much pain to so much as shake out his arm.“I hurt you?”He sounded puzzled.Then, suspiciously, “Ihurtyou?Or you were already hurt?”
Oh no.“Would you like to see the bruises, asshole?”Josh spat, using the obscenity on purpose to make himself sound young and callow.
